Dr Jing Fu is currently a group leader and senior lecturer in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Monash University, Australia. He obtained BEng from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, MEng (2007) and PhD (2008) from The Pennsylvania State University with a focus on manufacturing engineering and microfabrication. In 2008, he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), to continue his research and specialised biology training at NIH Bethesda, Maryland campus. During the course of the fellowship, Dr Fu explored a number of “world first” projects including the integration of cryogenic focused ion beam (cryo-FIB) with cryo-EM and 3D FIB-SEM tomography of virus-cell interfaces. He was also involved in exploring bioimaging with atom probe via collaboration with company Imago, and acquired extensive knowledge and experience preparing different biological model systems.

Dr Fu is an international frontrunner of employing Focused Ion Beam (FIB) and Atom Probe Tomography (APT) to investigate the atomic and molecular signatures in biological cells. Training in both engineering and biology has enabled him to make significant contributions to the advances of FIB and APT for frozen hydration samples which are desired in life science. His group first reported applying extremely thin conductive coating to “disguise” the surface of insulated and biological samples, followed by imaging with APT in voltage mode which is considered to work for conductive materials only. The successful imaging of bacterial cells with APT, provided the atom-by-atom view of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (superbugs), revealing compositional changes potentially linked to the resistant mechanism. Dr Fu’s group also explored graphene encapsulation, a new route for liquid APT imaging without the cryo-transfer system, and recently achieved direct APT imaging of proteins and nanoparticles in solution. Dr Fu’s research interests also include tuning nanomaterials by charged particle beams to fabricate unprecedented 1D and 3D nanostructures. The fundamental insights of how dynamics are produced at nanoscale provide knowledge to precisely control the nanostructures for preparing novel site specific samples for APT imaging.